Berlin Wild

by Elly Welt

  “Hello?” He waited. “Tanya, my dear child, are you all right? . . . Thank God! Your mother and father? . . . That is wonderful . . . I am fine . . . He is fine. We are all fine. Good . . . good. Here is Josef. He will tell you all the news.” The Chief handed me the phone.

  I could hear Tanya’s voice calling, “Josef? Josef?”

  The Chief, tears in his eyes, smiled at me. “Two children saved,” he said. “That is something, is it not? Two children saved?” And he strode from the lab.

  “Tanya, how are you? Are you all right? I’ve been to your house three times.”

  “Mother said you would call. I’m fine. How are you? It was terrible, but we are all right, all of us. Josef, I am so sorry I did not dance with you.”

  “Where were you? We were really getting worried.”

  “Oh, Josef, it was terrible. The Russians.”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “No. I was hidden near Königswusterhausen, but there was no food, and it was cold, and when we got back to Berlin there were American officers living in our house, and we had to stay with friends until they moved out. They were very nice, the Americans, when they found out we were not Nazis. They gave us food. We have food. And you? What happened to you? We knew you were taken from Farben, but that’s all.”

  “I was forced labor at Wolffs—a factory near Ostkreuz—and I escaped.”

  “You escaped?”

  Ah, the old chill was back. “Yes, I escaped.”

  “How did you do that?”

  I did not answer her.

  “Josef?”

  “Yes? I’m here.”

  “Did you call your father yet?”

  “No, and I don’t intend to.”

  “He is very ill, Josef, and worried about you.”

  “And how would you know this?”

  “I have visited him. Almost every day, since we got back. Our fathers know each other.”

  “How nice.”

  “He is not well.”

  “I can’t come just now, Tanya. The Chief needs me. I’m the only one left to sort the flies.”

  “Oh, no. Did something happen to the Krupinskys?”

  “They’re all right. He’s working in a hospital nearby. And almost everyone else has left.”

  “Professor Kreutzer?”

  “He’s still here, and Frau Doktor and Sonja.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Treponesco.”

  “Monika? Is she still there?”

  I was silent. Monika had been gone for quite some time, but, at that moment, I did not want to give Tatiana the satisfaction of knowing.

  “So! She’s there. You should know that your next-door neighbor has moved into your house to take care of your father.”

  “My next-door neighbor? You don’t mean that idiot Baron is living in my house?”

  “His was bombed and burned down. You should be grateful. Your father is really helpless, and it is your duty to care for him.”

  I sighed. “Does Father have food?”

  “Yes. Some American friends sent cartons and cartons of cigarettes—through some colonel they knew—and you can buy anything with American cigarettes. He bought you a motorcycle, a BMW, with four cartons and a sailboat for two cartons. Josef? Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, I heard you.”

  “So he has food now. But for a while he didn’t. He was more upset about not having food for his dog than for himself.”

  “Dritt? How is Dritt?”

  “Dead. Your father couldn’t feed him.”

  Poor old Dritt. I couldn’t even save him.

  “I told your father about us.”

  “Everything?”

  “No, not everything. I told my mother everything, and she understood. She said you would call me. He has given me a ring.”

  “A what?”

  “Your father gave me a ring—your mother’s diamond.”

  “That’s quite nice, Tatiana. I think the two of you will be quite happy together.”

  There developed a little inner circle, which was in the habit of having all three meals together at the same table in the cafeteria—the Chief and Sonja Press, Professor Kreutzer and his wife, Frau Doktor, the Roumanian Biologist George Treponesco, and I. Breakfast was at seven thirty, lunch at noon, and dinner at six thirty in the evening. We regrouped again at nine to do some serious drinking and to talk about what lay in store.

  Each of us was concerned with his own small life and future. The Chief and Professor Kreutzer dreamed of starting a university in a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the American Sector of Berlin and had actually made several trips to Potsdam to promote their idea. All the others—except for Treponesco—wanted to be on the Chief’s faculty to continue research and to teach. I, of course, had visions of being their student in this imaginary university.

  Our self-interested preoccupations continued throughout the summer, until August sixth, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

  That night, at shortly after nine, the inner circle was gathered at our table in the cafeteria, settling down with glasses of vodka, American cigarettes, Russian caviar, and Swiss chocolate bars—all but Professor Kreutzer, who generally listened to the BBC at nine and then reported the latest news to us.

  He arrived breathless and ashen, and without changing his glasses even once, he said, “BBC reports that the Allies have dropped an atomic bomb on Japan.”

  Stunned silence. Then shock and disbelief and everybody talking at once.

  Finally, one could hear Frau Doktor say, “Are you certain you heard it correctly?”

  And we ceased talking and listened for Professor Kreutzer’s answer.

  “I am sure!”

  “It’s just a bluff to scare the Soviets,” said Treponesco.

  “I don’t think so,” said Professor Kreutzer. His voice was shaking-I had never seen him so profoundly disturbed.

  “Did they say anything about uranium in connection with it?” asked the Chief.

  “No. They spoke of the bomb as being equivalent to tens of thousands of tons of TNT.”

  The Chief began to pace, hands locked behind his back. “My God,” he said. “If they really did it, what kind of an airplane must they have developed to drop that thing.”

  “You are assuming that they had to drop a whole reactor,” said Professor Kreutzer.

  “What else could it be?” said Treponesco.

  “There are many possibilities,” said Professor Kreutzer. “But, fortunately, none that we know of here in Germany.”

  “It’s all a bluff,” said Treponesco again, “to scare the Soviets.”

  “Then how do you account for the reference to tens of thousands of tons of TNT,” I said sarcastically.

  “The Soviets,” said the Chief, thoughtfully. “If it is, indeed, a uranium bomb, I don’t think the Russians are in on it. Max!” He stopped pacing and looked at Professor Kreutzer. “That would explain the disappearance of Heisenberg and Hahn and all the other nuclear scientists in the American and British sectors. The Americans and the British have had a deep interest in the subject, but obviously the Russians have not been thinking about it at all.”

  Professor Kreutzer removed from his pocket the black-rims and began a cleaning and changing routine. We waited, silently, for him to continue.

  Finally, he donned the rimless and spoke. “The next newscast is at nine o’clock Greenwich Mean Time, which is midnight here—Moscow time. They promise to have more information by then. Let us all listen together and after carefully evaluating this development, let us make our decisions.”

  Shortly before midnight, we gathered around the radio in the Chief’s private office: Professor Kreutzer, Treponesco, Frau Doktor, the Physicist of the cyclotron at the post office—who, because of the news, had hurried out to the Institute—the Chief, of course, Sonja, and I. At exactly twelve, the volume was turned up:

  This is London. . . . Twenty-one hours Greenwich Mean Time . . . BBC World Service. The
news tonight is dominated by a tremendous achievement of Allied scientists—the production of the atomic bomb. One has already been dropped on a Japanese army base.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Treponesco. “I just—”

  “Shhhh.”

  “Quiet, damn you.”

  . . . and reconnaissance aircraft couldn’t see anything hours later because of the tremendous pall of smoke and dust that was still obscuring the city of once over three hundred thousand inhabitants. The Allies report that they have spent over five hundred million pounds on the project; up to one hundred twenty-five thousand people helped to build the factories in America and sixty-five thousand are running them now. Few of the workers, it is reported, knew what they were producing. They could see huge quantities of materials going in, and nothing coming out—for the size of the explosive charge is very small.

  At this, all in the room exchanged significant looks.

  Then came the final confirmation:

  The American Secretary for War has announced that uranium was used in making the bomb.

  “My God, three hundred thousand dead?”

  “They didn’t say that.”

  “Madness!”

  “There must have been tremendous cooperation among the Americans and the British to do this thing.”

  “Thank God Hitler threw all the great physicists out of Germany—Lise Meitner—all of them,” said the Physicist from the post office.

  “When Hahn first made his discovery,” said the Chief, “and realized the implications of uranium fission, he wanted to throw all the uranium into the sea just to avoid such a catastrophe.”

  “Why didn’t he?” said Frau Doktor.

  “Poor Heisenberg.” Treponesco snorted. “It makes him out a failure.”

  “Nonsense!” said the Chief. “Don’t you believe for a moment that Heisenberg or Hahn wanted the atomic bomb for Adolf Hitler.”

  “What I cannot understand,” said Professor Kreutzer, “is why they waited so long to drop it on the Japanese.”

  “Maybe the Allies thought they would surrender right after Germany,” said Treponesco.

  “No,” said the Chief. “They didn’t have it any sooner. If they had, they would have dropped it on Berlin.”

  My God. We were all silent for quite some time.

  Sonja served tea.

  “It was political,” said the Physicist from the post office. “It is a warning to the Soviets.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” said Treponesco.

  “You said it was a bluff,” I corrected him.

  More silence. We drank our tea. The Chief jumped to his feet and tried to pace, but the room was too crowded. Professor Kreutzer took a spectacle case from his pocket, took out the gold-rims, began to clean them, removed the black-rims he was wearing, and put on the gold. We watched him and waited.

  “It is obvious,” he said, finally, “that with the dropping of this bomb by the Americans and the British, interest in anything nuclear will be intense.”

  All nodded in agreement.

  He continued. “The Soviets have the habit of packing up everything and shipping it off to Russia.”

  The Physicist from the post office jumped to his feet. “They wouldn’t do that to me,” he said. “Why, the magnet alone, of my cyclotron, weighs some two hundred twenty tons. Even the Russians couldn’t be that stupid.”

  “One must not forget,” said Professor Kreutzer, “that the Germans found a working cyclotron in Paris in 1941, took it apart, and shipped it to Alsace-Lorraine, where our colleague is still trying to put it together.”

  “Yes, but that was different.”

  “In what way different?”

  “The post office cyclotron was built only because our transmitter wasn’t in use and there sat idle a huge power plant. It would be sheer folly to try to move it. The Paris move was sabotage.”

  “I think I could persuade them,” said the Chief, “that our small atom smasher would not survive the trip, that they would be better off to let us continue our research here.”

  “Were you able to convince them that the primates would not survive the trip?” asked Professor Kreutzer.

  “You’re right. Max. You’re right. But Max, if I serve them the pure wine, and they know what I’ve done here, surely then—”

  “The pure wine, Alex? What is the pure wine?”

  “It is the real truth of my loyalty.”

  “What loyalty?”

  “To Russia rather than to Germany.”

  “And tell me, my good friend, as you would tell it to them, of the real truth of your loyalty to Stalin, liberator of all people.”

  The Chief threw back his head and rumbled a desperate deep laugh. “If I were to tell them the real truth, dear Max, I would have to lie.”

  “I see!” said Professor Kreutzer. “My friends, we must proceed carefully, as before. These Russians—they are no different from the Nazis. Perhaps the sheer magnitude will keep them from moving the cyclotron at the post office. I don’t know. But you, Alex, should take Sonja and leave at dawn. Go to the Americans!”

  “No! I will stay. My work is here. But I will hide our small bit of uranium.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. That’s the first thing they’ll come looking for. That would be a mistake. A fatal mistake.”

  “But you, Max, you should leave.”

  Professor Kreutzer sighed. “You are making mistakes. To hide the uranium is a mistake. To stay is a mistake.”

  “I will stay,” said Treponesco.

  Then the Chief polled each person in the room, one at a time, starting with Frau Doktor.

  “Ruth,” he said, “there is no need for you to stay. You can carry on your work in other places. As much as I would miss you, I beg of you to leave.”

  “Oh, Alex, you know I have been in contact with our colleagues in Great Britain. But I can’t go. Not quite yet.”

  “I think you should leave immediately,” said Professor Kreutzer. “In the morning.”

  She shook her head. “I am in the process of gathering my research notes. Even if I hurry, it would take me at least another week before I could put it all together. But then I will leave—in a week or so.”

  “Max?” said the Chief.

  “I will send my wife away at once. But I will stay,” said Professor Kreutzer.

  “Josef,” said the Chief. “You must leave.”

  “You must,” echoed some of the others.

  I, also, did not want to leave that garden of a graveyard. I did not want to leave them. They were all the family I had.

  “I will stay.”

  Knowing the consequences, we all made the same choice as Uncle Otto, Aunt Greta, and my mother, the same choice, we were discovering, as millions of others. One lives one’s present naively.

  Using metal mine detectors, the day after the second atomic bomb was dropped, on Nagasaki, they easily found the kilo of uranium in the bulky lead cases which the Chief had buried in the earth in the large greenhouse in the park. The buildings and grounds swarmed with green-capped, armed Russians. Sergeant Lazar from Galicia and his friendly guards were replaced with NKVD. Everyone at the Institute was interviewed. We were ordered to continue our scientific work. And we were all placed under arrest—forbidden to leave the grounds.

  The next morning, shortly after dawn, as I lay sleeping in my apartment in the complex at the back of the park, I was awakened by a large convoy of trucks pulling into the circular drive at the entrance to the Institute. It was Saturday, August 11, 1945. I dressed and hurried across the park to see what was happening.

  They were taking it apart—the Institute—loading everything into the empty trucks: chairs, tables, drapes, dishes. The Bechstein piano, my good Lord, was being carried down the front steps.

  The soldiers ignored me as I walked through the lobby and up the steps of the right wing to the lab. Sonja was there, pacing and wringing her hands. “Oh, Josef. Alex wants to see you right away. Hurry.” />
  I ran up the circular staircase to the penthouse. There were two armed guards at the door to his private office. They allowed me to knock.

  I could hear the Chief say, “Enter.”

  They allowed me to pass and to close the door behind me.

  The Chief was stuffing papers into a small suitcase on his desk. He took my face into his great hands. “Josef, the Soviets take not only equipment but also people.”

  I tried to pull my head away. His hands were so large for a man of his height. He looked into my eyes. I knew what he was going to say, and I didn’t want to hear it.

  “It would not be good for you in Siberia.” He dropped his hands and turned his back on me.

  “I do not want to leave you, Herr Professor.”

  He sighed, his back still to me. “During the night, Max and I talked at great length about your future. Also, I have been, for some time, in contact with your father.”

  I had not been consulted.

  “You must hide yourself and escape through the apples. Go to your father. When you leave me now, you must go immediately to Max. He has certain papers for you and will tell you of our wishes for your future.” He turned again to face me.

  I shook my head.

  “Your father is ill. He needs you.” Again, he turned his back on me and began to sort papers and put them in the suitcase.

  “Herr Professor,” I said.

  But he would not look at me. He continued to sort the papers as though I no longer existed.

  I left him, walked past the guards, past Sonja Press, who sat weeping at her desk in the reception office, and down the circular staircase to Physics. There were two armed guards by the open door of the lab. They let me pass. Professor Kreutzer was sitting on a high stool at a worktable. I stood, silent, as he changed to the black-rims.

  “You are nineteen years old,” he said. “You know that you have missed the boat on mathematics.”

  I nodded. Tears filled my eyes, and I wept. He turned from me until I was in control; then, facing me again, he gestured, both hands open, palms up. Then he, too, began to weep and turned away, again, until he was in control. Then, looking at me, he said, “Do you understand why I say this, Josef?”

  “Yes, Herr Professor, I do.”